Butterfly Nails

Hello there! I am back from holiday which means I am back to blogging!!

As you may know, I went up to Norfolk on a boat trip with friends. Whilst up there, I caught my first fish, saw loads of cool plants and animals, and the main insects I saw were butterflies! Norfolk is full of them! Really pretty ones as well, so my next post is inspired by the beautiful little bugs.

Peacock Butterfly

Tortoise Shell Butterfly

To create this look, you will need:

-base coat

-two contrasting colours

-foil and a make up sponge

-black and white nail art pens

-corrector pen or nail varnish remover and a cotton bud

-top coat

Firstly, paint your nails in a protective base coat, and then your first colour. Here, I used two coats of a new Ciate polish I received in a recent Glossy Box. This Orange colour is called Speed Dial. Next, on your piece of foil, stripe your two colours next to one another like so

Some people recommend using a white coat before ombre effects so the colours are stronger, but I find if you use the lighter colour on the bottom then you don't need the white as your just layering onto the colours you have already used. Take your Makeup sponge, and dab the two colours on the foil and pat onto the nail in a blending effect.

If the blending doesn't look perfect then do not worry as a topcoat will smooth it out and make the gradient less dramatic. Clean up around the edges where the paint has gone over the nail.

Now your ready to do your butterfly effect! You can try all sorts of patterns, but I just googled butterfly nails and got this simple idea. Using nail art pens, you simply do a half moon in the corner of your nail, then do long arcs coming out of it.

Next you fill in the top part of the nail black and then using a white nail art pen, do little dots of white at the tips. (I realise a visual tutorial of this would have been much easier but I painted them before I thought about it!)

And there you have it! Butterfly wing effect nails. Let me know if you like them and if you have any natured inspired manicures you would like to see.